Save Us From Religion

I know, I know. Not all religious people are nuts, and it's unfair to tar with the same brush a vast group of people that encompasses a variety of faiths and beliefs.

Still, I think it's obvious that the same yearning or whatever that leads people to follow "on faith" the dictates of writings that are thousands of years old also leads them to submit to the interpretations of those writings by so-called prophets and holy men. I personally have never understood why people consider religion that is revealed by someone else to be superior to what their own minds can conceive, but that's neither here nor there.

The point is, this is what theocracy looks like.

When Warren Jeffs inherited control of the Fundamentalist Church of Jesus Christ of Latter Day Saints in 2000, following the death of his father, Rulon, the first thing he did was marry 30 of his father's youngest and prettiest wives. Then he set about tightening his reins on Colorado City, a town where the women dress like the cast of "Little House on the Prairie" and the civic leaders -- the mayor, the police chief, the superintendent of schools -- are all subject to the prophet's orders. Jeffs banned holiday celebrations, forbade followers from listening to music except for the droning spiritual chants that he himself records, and prohibited all forms of worldly entertainment, including sports -- bowling, football, even snowball fights. Colorado City was run like a theocracy, with Jeffs its ayatollah.

In order to keep tabs on his followers, Jeffs relied on the local police, who acted more like the Taliban's morality squad than keepers of the peace. The cops were essentially informants, loyal first to Jeffs and second to the state laws that they were sworn to uphold. They patrolled the community for violations of the prophet's moral code, reporting infractions to their supreme leader. They would pull kids over for alleged traffic violations, then take photographs if they found CDs or other worldly possessions, which they turned over to the Jeffs. Until last year, when government officials in Utah and Arizona began investigating charges of underage marriage and tax fraud, Colorado City was essentially allowed to thrive outside the law.

Let's keep religion out of government, shall we?